Uncategorized —

Community-based 911 web site proposed

Two professors are proposing a government-sanctioned 911 web site that would …

The 911 system in the US works well under an average day's load but comes to a crashing halt under widespread emergency situations, according to two lecturers from the University of Maryland. To combat this, Ben Shneiderman and Jennifer Preece are proposing (subscription) a nationwide network of 911 web sites—911.gov—that will include input from the community as well as information from the government's emergency services.

During incidents like Hurricane Katrina, the Kobe earthquake, the British foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, and the Indonesian tsunami, communities collaborated via the Internet to provide supplies and assistance to those in need of help, which is what Shneiderman and Preece are looking to create. Under the proposed project, the web sites will be run by "trained volunteers with a few professionals, much as volunteer fire departments now operate," according to the proposition in Science magazine. The sites would accept text, video, and photos from the community to help emergency crews react more quickly to disasters as well as inform others of the status of the situation via the web. "Citizen reporters would report to a centralized authority who will take care of emergency response coordination and allocate scarce resources of police fire and medical services," Professor Shneiderman told BBC News.

Professors Shneiderman and Preece believe that such a project could succeed due to the popularity and growth of other social/community-driven sites, such as Craigslist and the Amber Alert system. With so many bloggers and "citizen journalists" out en masse during emergency situations—remember how many new sites and photos were online immediately after Hurricane Katrina?—such a coordinated effort could empower the community to support and protect each other. The site itself would be a national effort, but offer community-based sections for reports on each city, like Craigslist.

Such a project would not come without challenges, of course. Just the current 911 system is subject to pranksters, the 911 web site would also likely be a focus for attacks. "You would have to pre-register, the system would not allow anonymous entries," Professor Shneiderman said. "You must get people engaged in advance, to try it and learn it and be part of it." But enticing community members to be active before a disaster strikes could be of a challenge, as it's easy to mindlessly go on with everyday life until it gets interrupted. Also, the success of such a program will depend highly on the level of freedom they allow the citizen journalists to have on the site. If there are too many restrictions and lockdowns on content, users will just seek out other mediums for organizing their efforts, defeating the purpose of a centralized, government-sanctioned web site to begin with.

As for costs, Shneiderman and Preece expect that a 911.gov service would possibly double the current 911 phone center budget, which seems like a lot for what amounts to be a glamorized wiki. They suggest that the community response groups could be funded and maintained through fees from ISPs, similar to the fees on phone lines to support 911 service. If implemented, they expect development, pilot testing, and implementation of the project to take three to five years. For now, the professors may launch a pilot of the program at the University of Maryland later this year, with possible funding from the National Science Foundation.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui